


in memoriam

by snivellus (queervulcan)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Minor Character Death, Post-War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-13
Updated: 2018-10-13
Packaged: 2019-08-01 12:17:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16284464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queervulcan/pseuds/snivellus
Summary: life comes in a whirlwind





	in memoriam

**Author's Note:**

> or, square 31 of moodboard bingo

Lavender was a sensitive child. She laughed too loud, too much, and too passionately.

They called her crazy, she called herself passionate.

For many years, she would play with the other pureblood girls in the fields of their manor homes, chasing butterflies and giggling in the tall flowers.

She socialized like she was born for it, smiled when she wanted to scream, and batted her eyelashes to get herself out of trouble. She became adept at crying on command, and, in her final year of living, became adept at shoving it away to protect those smaller than her.

Lavender was bright, and beautiful, and for her short existence, she loved too much.

* * *

Lavender was an inquisitive child. She wanted to know how everything worked, and why something was done a certain way. Her parents joked that when she grew up she would become a lawyer or a journalist from how much she questioned everything. When she died, they grieved at all her lost chances.

* * *

Lavender was made of stereotypes, and she reveled in it. She loved all the shades of purple, she screamed when there were rodents or bugs, and she cried too hard when an animal was injured.

Many saw her empathy as her downfall, but Lavender didn’t. In times of turbulence, she saw her ability to empathize as her greatest strength.

* * *

Lavender was a lonely child. Many of her pureblood friends went on to be Slytherin’s, and her staunch Gryffindor family forbade her from being with them.

Lavender, however, also a Gryffindor at heart, still sent them all lavender flowers with little pick me up notes at least once a week. And if she saw them smile and tuck it back into their pockets, she said nothing.

* * *

As her name suggested, she loved flowers.

When she finally became friends with the girls in her dorm, she would go out of her way to pick flowers and keep them preserved in special vases. It brightened up their room, and made it smell nice.

And when the flowers became too old even for the preservation charms, she would pull them out and teach the other girls how to press them with heavy books or how to make flower crowns. Even Hermione.

* * *

Lavender was born as the season changed. The snow was starting to melt, flowers were springing up from the mush, and as the clock ticked into the first day of spring, she gave her first wailing breath.

* * *

She didn’t have close friends growing up. She had playmates, and girls she had make pretend parties with.

When the other students called Parvati ditzy, she took a second look at her sharp eyes and sharp nails, and decided she wanted to be her best friend.

Lavender would be her best friend for many, many years, until she took her last breath clutching on to her hand with what strength she had left.

* * *

Being in the same year as Harry Potter wasn’t easy, but it also wasn’t as hard since they were in the same House.

They played, they tumbled, they rough housed, and when people snidely asked why she was a Gryffindor, she pulled her hair into braids and tucked them down her back, heavy and hot against her neck.

* * *

Lavender couldn’t quite get herself to be less passionate. She tried, knowing her very life was on the line.

She tried, but she cried, and laughed, and cursed teachers who targeted too small children.

She put herself in the way of the Carrows, even if it meant she very often found herself picking her shaking, sweaty limbs off of dirty stones.

She carried charms in her pockets, charmed coins buried in her socks and bra lining, her wand in an arm holster, and curses on the tip of her tongue.

When people thought back to when they questioned why she was a Gryffindor, they would remember her in her final year, refusing to hide away, and her hair blowing into her bloody mouth as she cursed Greyback.

* * *

Lavender fought in the same way she did everything else: with a gusto that not many could rival, save perhaps Lockhart himself.

She threw herself into her studies, wanting to be the best and brightest, and yet always falling short.

But she tried, and she kept trying, and she died trying.

* * *

Dennis published photographs of his brothers. If Lavender has been there to see them, she would have laughed too loud and nitpicked each photo of herself.

As it was, Parvati had to do it for her, over great, wracking sobs and choked on laughter.

They were photographs of a little boy, who did not yet know magic was real, and the photographs were shaky and somewhat dim.

And then, there were photos of Hogwarts, of Diagon Alley in peacetime, of the occupants of the castle. There was even one of Snape, looking bored over a textbook in the library, the light from the window highlighting his sallowness.

There was one of an upper year Slytherin looking sleepy at the breakfast table, a moving photo of the golden trio smiling and laughing at the lake, a still life of a Hufflepuff girl savoring a tasty dessert, her eyes wide and bright.

There was a moving photo of the Weasley twins scuffling, always playful in a manner they no longer could be. There were photos, pages upon pages of memories of those living and those deceased.

Not every photograph moved, and Lavender would have loved the foreignness of still photos. She would have shaken them, trying to get them to move, and watched entranced as they didn’t.

In the end, the only sign that Lavender existed was in hand me down story books, roughly used and with patched edges, and in the memories of the other students and teachers.

Even those she was not friends with, could not forget her face. She was only seventeen.

For seventeen years, Lavender laughed too loud, too bright, and she loved in the same way. She was an exhibitionist from birth, and inquisitive of everything.

She fought with the grace and protectiveness of a lioness. She lived up to her House, and surpassed its expectations.

Lavender would have grown up to be whatever she wanted, whether it was a model, a journalist, a lawyer, or a stay at home mom. She had a future ahead of her, where she could be anything or anyone. She would have been married, and with the family she has always wanted, her neighbor forever being Parvati.

Her kids would have grown up with Parvati’s kids, been best friends in the way they were as children, and she would grow old and grey with people who adored her for the loud, sensitive girl she was.

Instead, Lavender got a short, bright seventeen years of life.


End file.
